Childless adults with higher secure attachment state have stronger parenting motivation

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Adult security attachment state Parenting motivation Infant faces Reward Liking Wanting This study aimed to systematically examine the coherence in the motivation of parenting with the security attachment state of adults. A total of 228 childless participants (126 men, 102 women) first completed a self-report questionnaire including the State Adult Attachment Measure scale and the Interest in Infants questionnaire. They were then administered three laboratory-based tasks: a) liking, which measured the specific hedonic experience to infants' neutral faces; b) representational responding (actively seeking infants' neutral faces); and c) evoked responding (actively retaining images of infants' neutral faces). The results revealed that after controlling for gender, anxiety, and avoidance, security attachment state was associated with higher levels of interest in infants, assessed via verbal measures, and associated with liking and wanting (divided into representational and evoked responding) for infants' neutral faces. Moreover, infant faces elicited pleasure but not the sense of dominance or wanting in individuals with high avoidance attachment state. These results suggest that improving security attachment state may enhance motivation for parenting and improve the quality of parental caregiving. Attachment is a lifetime construct that guides thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in relationships across the life span (Bowlby, 1979). Although Bowlby focused mainly on attachment in infancy, he also proposed that the cognitive representations of early relationships serve as templates for future relationships (Bowlby, 1969). Following this view, many researchers in recent decades have investigated the links between adult attachment and parenting. Their results show that, regardless of data collection method (interview-based measures or self-report questionnaires), a secure attachment state was consistently related to more positive parenting outcomes, and insecurity to negative parenting out-Parents' own attachment can influence the quality of parental care-giving, which is believed to be derived by internal working models (IWMs) of relationships. IWMs are formed by early attachment experiences and serve as templates for current and future relationships (Bretherton & Munholland, 2008). If an infant received sensitive and responsive care from an attachment figure, he/she would likely form representations of the self as worthy of love and care, and the belief that the attachment figure can be relied on in times of need. These representations then continue to influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in their relationships with their own children (Johnson et al., 2010). Several studies have suggested that IWMs play a crucial role …